A Study On The Effect Of Teachers' Written Corrective Feedback On The Linguistic Accuracy Of Senior High School Students' English Writing

Since Truscott(1996)claimed that teachers' written corrective feedback(WCF)is ineffective and even harmful and should be abandoned,the effectiveness of WCF has attracted lots of attention in the field of second language writing in the past thirty years.To date,WCF is still a divisive issue among scholars.Some researchers agreed with Truscott.In contrast,most researchers suggest that WCF is helpful in improving students' linguistic accuracy in their writing.Although many empirical studies have examined the effect of WCF on L2 learners' writing,there are only a few studies investigating its effect on the linguistic accuracy of students' English writing in Chinese senior high school.Therefore,based on related research theories and previous empirical studies,the thesis sets out to investigate three questions:(1)Is teachers' WCF effective on improving the linguistic accuracy of senior high school students' English writing?(2)Is there any difference in the short-term effect of direct corrective feedback(DCF)and indirect corrective feedback(ICF)on the linguistic accuracy of students' English writing?(3)Is there any difference in the long-term effect of DCF and ICF on the linguistic accuracy of students' English writing?The thesis adopts both the quantitative and qualitative research methods and a quasi-experiment and an interview are administered.The subjects are 90 Senior Two students in Pingxiang No.1 Middle School.These subjects are randomly assigned into 3 groups and each group has 30 students.The quasi-experiment uses a pretest – treatment – post-test – delayed post-test design over a 12-week period.During the treatment period,the DCF group received direct corrective feedback on their writing and the ICF group received indirect corrective feedback on their writing while the control group received no written corrective feedback.Accuracy is measured in new pieces of writing.The purpose of the interview is to get information about how the subjects respond to DCF and ICF.Three major findings emerge.Firstly,WCF is effective on improving students' linguistic accuracy in new pieces of writing,whether it is provided as DCF or ICF.Secondly,DCF has a more significant short-term effect than ICF on improving students' linguistic accuracy in new writing.Thirdly,ICF has a more significant long-term effect than DCF on improving students' linguistic accuracy in new writing.Based on the findings,the present study gives some constructive suggestions to senior English writing teaching.Firstly,the correct use of grammar enables learners to express and communicate effectively.English teachers should attach importance to WCF,realize its value of helping students to notice the gap between their interlanguage and the target language and continue providing effective WCF for learners.Secondly,when providing WCF,teachers should try to make full use of ICF,providing learners with opportunities to reflect on and correct their own errors by themselves.In this way,students can pay their attention to the corrections,thus strengthening students' internalization and consolidation of language knowledge.Finally,in actual teaching,the effect of WCF is influenced by many factors,such as students' language proficiency and their attention to feedback.Therefore,teachers need to provide WCF flexibly according to actual situation.